CDA police assist FBI in recovering missing children

On Jan. 31 at 4:20 p.m., Coeur d’Alene City Police Officers Hank Dunham and Nick Lowry responded to the La Quinta Inn at 2209 Sherman Ave. for a welfare check on four children.

Information of concern for the children was forwarded to the Coeur d'Alene Police after the FBI contacted the Post Falls Police based on a tip from a pastor at Real Life Ministries in Post Falls.

The pastor said he was contacted by members of his church who saw a poster of the missing children at Wal-Mart. The father of the children had been spending time at the church recently doing odd jobs and often had the four kids with him.

The pastor (who declined to speak with the media) thought it was odd that the father did not have a permanent address. The pastor looked up the juveniles on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website. The FBI was then contacted by the church.

Coeur d’Alene officers spoke to the children, 17-year-old Cassandra Donnell, 12-year-old Catlina Jones, 12-year-old Jared Jones, and 7-year-old Marshall Jones who said they’d left Bellingham, WA, two-years-ago with their father. They said they left because their mother ran off with another man to Miami.

The children lived in Alaska for a while then the family moved to Post Falls and eventually evicted from their home before moving to Coeur d’Alene. They had been living at the motel for a couple of months.

Officers also interviewed the father, (he was not identified because he was not arrested), after detaining him near his vehicle in a business parking lot at 220 W. Kathleen Ave.

The father of the children said he has stayed at the La Quinta with the children for the last five or six months. He said the children are not enrolled in school because he has been home schooling them. He claimed his ex-wife is an unfit mother and he left Washington with the children approximately two and a half years ago. During that time they lived in Florida, Alaska, Post Falls and currently in Coeur d’Alene.

Dispatch advised our officers of a current protection order out of Washington that needed to be served upon the father. He was served the paperwork but there was no arrest made due to no charges filed out of Washington. Officers sheltered all four children and they are currently in the custody of Health and Welfare.

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